"One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?
Did you guess which thing was not like the others?
Did you guess which thing just doesn't belong?"
Words and Music by Joe Raposo and Jon Stone
Image. How do we see ourselves and how do others see us? There was nothing more important in HS for me than image. How did we manage to get through HS without our BFF's. I've talked about Joy and Kelley and now I'd like to tell you about Louise.
She attended our enormous HS but shined like a bright star. Brilliant, tall with striking features, excelled at everything. She was also warm, kind and extremely empathetic.
Life dealt her a stern hand and she came up with Aces. We kept each other laughing and crying and laughing again.
I often wonder why she choose to be my friend. We shared our lives with each other, never caddy, always supportive of one another, no teenage girl bashing.
In HS I was surrounded by opposites. My home life was filled with mental illness, alcoholism, drug use and prostitution. The once ethnic family oriented neighborhood that it started out to be became the opposite. I went to a HS on the other side of town (so I wouldn't get the crap beaten out of me after school). There, on the, "other side of town" I found what I thought was, "normal", two parent homes, nice homes and a place where I didn't have to worry about my safety.
I got a job after school and wore nice clothes even though most of the people I went to HS with knew of some of my living circumstances. I tried to fit in. I was so conflicted that it was people like Louise who kept me on even ground. I found my voice, literally, in singing, acting and dancing. Louise encouraged me and always told me how talented I was. I was on the drill team, sang in the Glee Club,( that show on TV had nothing on us baby!), starred in plays and I was terrified, always.
I was never a star student in spite of having an IQ of 135, my home life took such precedence over daily thoughts, it was difficult to concentrate. Who was going to be home when I arrived after a one hr. bus ride across town and a half a mile walk home through a dangerous neighborhood? A new boyfriend of my Mothers? Some Pimp off the streets? Someone doing drugs in the kitchen?
I remember our class president and her best friend suggesting that after I graduate I should become a "hairdresser". Louise over heard that and said, "you can become whatever you want to be, you are a smart person. I didn't hear that very often. Like I said, Louise grounded me.
What I didn't realize was that although I thought all of my friends lived such normal lives they were far from it. Their fathers may have been Doctors, Lawyers, Professors and Judges but the dysfunction was the same but behind big fancy doors. Ann's father was a famous judge and an abusive alcoholic. Lisa's father went, "away" to prison for fraud. Deaths were really suicides but we didn't speak of it. Wives having affairs, getting pregnant and passing off the child as their husbands (OMG look at that baby he/she looks exactly like my best friend Brenda, uh oh) and that was the only tip of the iceberg. Really, you can't make this stuff up. Yet, still I would have given anything to trade places with them because it was the, "image" that I was looking for. I'll trade my dysfunctional for your dysfunctional family.
My children, Shanna and Scott were the ones to suffer for my, "image" complex but that's for another blog.
Louise was right, I could do anything and I did and so did she.
Here is to Louise, who danced in the Nutcracker, sang like a Lennon Sister, French Club President, the smartest girl in our school and my dear friend.
"Three of these kids belong together
Three of these kids are kind of the same
But one of these kids is doing his (her) own thing
Now it's time to play our game
It's time to play our game."
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